


A Soft Place to Fall

by honey_wheeler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Cunnilingus, Episode Spoilers, F/M, Mentions of Past Canonical Abuse, Missing Scene, s08e04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 11:23:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18755482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: It had been like salt in an open wound, watching Brienne with Jaime Lannister. Sansa had never seen her look so young and girlish. So happy. It’s everything she’s long deserved, but oh, how it reminded Sansa of what Ramsay had taken from her. All of them had: Gendry loping after Arya, tongue lolling out like he meant to replace Nymeria; Jon looking at Daenerys with such warmth and devotion in his eyes, different from the jocular affection he held for Tormund or Sam.Somehow it was the first time after Ramsay that Sansa truly felt broken.Warning: Episode spoilers for S08E04, mentions of past canonical abuse





	A Soft Place to Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the feast.

He’s easy to seduce. It’s something Sansa’s never even tried to do to a man before, yet still; only the slightest of nudges and Tyrion Lannister was in her bed chambers, drunkenly babbling his lust for her as he watched her shed her gown.

Why she’d wanted it so, she still couldn’t say. Or maybe she doesn’t wish to say, doesn’t wish to _think_. Her life has been so much thinking of late. Too much planning and plotting and considering. It makes her head burn like a fire all the time, no matter what she does, so that dark shadows stain her eyes from rarely sleeping. She lies in bed and thinks of stores, of grain, of rooms and beds and weapons. When she runs out of those things, she thinks of battles and fates, of what grim things the future may hold. 

When she exhausts the possibility of the present and the future, finally, she can’t seem to stop herself from dwelling on the past.

It had been like salt in an open wound, watching Brienne with Jaime Lannister. Sansa had never seen her look so young and girlish. So happy. It’s everything she’s long deserved, but oh, how it reminded Sansa of what Ramsay had taken from her. All of them had: Gendry loping after Arya, tongue lolling out like he meant to replace Nymeria; Jon looking at Daenerys with such warmth and devotion in his eyes, different from the jocular affection he held for Tormund or Sam. 

Somehow it was the first time after Ramsay that Sansa truly felt broken.

Tyrion has stilled his babbling and is watching her now as she pulls her shift over her head. Her braid falls forward over her shoulder as she bends to shed her smallclothes, pulling them off over the boots that she somehow can’t bring herself to remove. _Can’t run without boots_ , a small voice whispers, but Sansa tamps it down as ruthlessly as she once leashed her tongue around the Lannisters, the lords of the Vale, the Boltons. Tonight she does not wish to remember the fear of yesterday. 

It’s easier with Tyrion. Perhaps she should be afraid of him - he’s a Lannister after all, and a man, one who could hurt her near as much as any man, despite his size – but she isn’t. What she fears now is inside herself. That’s why Tyrion is here.

When she straightens, nude but for her boots, her braid a heavy rope between her bare breasts, he looks at her like she’s something wondrous. It shouldn’t matter; Sansa has spend the last year wishing men _didn’t_ find her wondrous to look upon, wanting nothing more than to be a shapeless, sexless, very nearly formless. If she could have dissolved into a cloud of mist and still been herself, she thinks she would have. Still, something inside her responds to his obvious appreciation. His love for her? Sansa isn’t sure. She doesn’t want to know.

“My lady,” he breathes. Then, his lips twitching into a sardonic smile, “Wife.”

Sansa snorts, an entirely unladylike sound. “Some wife.” Suddenly she’s pathetically grateful for his wit, his reassuring presence. If she’d loved him, she couldn’t have done this. It would have been too much, contrasted too sharply – too painfully – with Ramsay, and all she lost at his hands. Her scarred body can bear to be touched. Her scarred soul cannot. It feels calculated to think of Tyrion as a tool, more callous than Sansa likes to believe she can be. And yet, that’s precisely what he is to her now, an aid, little different than touching herself alone in her bed with insistent, impatient fingers.

He’s better than her fingers, and that’s really all she wanted.

He takes no coaxing to guide his head between her thighs when she lies back on her bed, his breath ghosting over her before she feels the touch of his tongue. Her bootheels rest at the small of his back, likely marking his tunic with grime and soot. His hair is something of a tangle under her fingers. He was always so much tidier in King’s Landing, more fastidious about his appearance. The years have been rough on all of them; no one has escaped unscarred. It’s a strange comfort to realize it. 

At first it’s difficult to relax into anything approaching pleasure, but Tyrion is patient, persistent. It helps that Ramsay had never done this to her. He’d threatened to have his dogs do it once, and that had been awful enough, more awful when she thought of it in retrospect, though he’d spared her that particular horror. She could almost be grateful to him now, pathetically grateful, that he left her this one thing to have without his memory tainting it for her. It makes it easier to urge Tyrion on, to clutch at his hair and rock her hips up against his face so wildly that his beard burns raw patches on her skin.

Her crisis is deep and quick. Her whole body stiffens, her knees squeezing shut around Tyrion’s ears, trapping him there though for a moment she wants only to push him away, as far away as she can. When he sheds his clothes and climbs atop the bed to fuck her, she lets him, if only because she needs to divorce the idea of a man’s cock from Ramsay. She needs to have a memory of anyone but him inside her. And there’s still pleasure in it, the faint reminder that once she longed to share this with a man – with a husband, one she naively believed would be fair-faced and charming and sweet. Tyrion, while interesting to look at, is far from fair. He’s witty more than he is charming. His kindness is not entirely like sweetness. The girl she was would not have appreciated him in this moment, but to Sansa, he’s the only person she can imagine sharing this with. That is its own sort of pain, and Sansa begins to weep, even as Tyrion moves inside her.

He doesn’t stop, much to her relief. She holds his hand fast against her waist, ready to hold him should he try to pull away, but he doesn’t. Perhaps it’s selfishness that drives him on, perhaps mindless lust. Or perhaps he knows some of what she feels. Perhaps he wants to give her what little he can. What he gives her is choice, and Sansa has never needed or wanted or treasured a gift more.

After, they lie together, as if truly married. As if this is their wedding bed. Sansa had not meant for any softness to come between them, but she finds herself curling towards him with her knees at his hip, laying her head on his shoulder, as if this is something they’ve done a thousand times and may do a thousand more.

Just before sleep claims her, hastened by the soothing stroke of his hand through her hair, she presses a kiss to his shoulder. It isn’t much, what they’ve carved out here tonight, but somehow it’s enough.


End file.
